Hazel had always lived on the edges of other people's lives.
She was the adopted daughter of Duke Denzel of Willowmere, taken in as an infant after being found abandoned on the estate's chapel steps. The duke and his late wife had raised her alongside their three natural daughters—golden-haired, rosy-cheeked beauties who bloomed like roses in society's sunlight. Hazel, by contrast, was the pale weed in the corner of the garden.
Her hair was a wild cascade of ginger that caught fire in candlelight, her eyes an unsettling shade of emerald green, her skin so fair it seemed almost translucent. Where her foster sisters laughed easily and danced at every ball, Hazel was kept quietly at home. No suitors were ever presented. No invitations arrived for her. Whispers followed her through the village market: strange girl, odd eyes, perhaps touched by fae blood or something darker.
She had long ago stopped asking why.
Instead, she sought answers in dusty library corners and overheard servants' gossip. Who were her true parents? Why had they left her wrapped in nothing but a scrap of embroidered silk bearing a single crimson rune no scholar could decipher? No one would tell her. The duke's face darkened whenever she tried to ask, and the household staff suddenly found urgent tasks elsewhere.
So Hazel learned to live in the shadows of her sisters' glittering lives, reading forbidden books by candlelight, wandering the estate's wilder grounds at dusk, feeling always that she belonged somewhere else. She longed for love that saw her clearly, for happiness that did not feel borrowed, for a home that felt like it had been waiting for her alone.
Now, lying in her narrow bed with dawn light creeping through the curtains, she felt that longing shift and settle on the impossible.
Primus.
A vampire lord. A creature out of nightmare. A man who had slept in a coffin for five centuries until her blood woke him.
And yet the thought of his palace—of vast dark halls and crimson eyes watching only her—felt more like home than this grand manor ever had.
"Hmmm. Strange," she murmured aloud to the empty room, tracing the faint pink line on her palm where the cut had been. "My safe place is a blood-drinking stranger who rose from a tomb."
She laughed softly at the absurdity, but the sound held no mockery—only wonder.
Across the veiled miles, in the heart of Primus's shadowed palace, the vampire lord stood at a tall window overlooking mist-shrouded spires. Dawn was an irritation he could now ignore, but old habits made him keep to the darker hours.
He turned as Lazarus entered the chamber, bowing low.
"My lord," the servant began cautiously, "the parchment you requested."
Primus took the sealed letter—thick vellum bearing his ancient crest in blood-red wax—and held it a moment, feeling the weight of what it asked.
"Deliver this to Duke Denzel of Willowmere," he said, voice calm as midnight. "It is a formal request for the hand of his daughter Hazel in marriage."
Lazarus's violet eyes widened. He hesitated—an uncharacteristic pause for one so eternally composed.
"My lord… I do not think the human duke will agree. The girl is adopted, yes, but she is also…" He lowered his voice. "She is the reason you were cursed into sleep. The prophecy named her bloodline as the instrument of your downfall—or your awakening. The duke knows at least some of the old tales. He may fear what granting this would mean."
Primus's gaze turned glacial. The air in the chamber chilled until frost bloomed on the windowpanes.
"Lazarus," he said softly, each word edged with centuries of command, "I dare you to speak further and see your head removed from your shoulders before the echo fades."
Lazarus dropped to one knee instantly, silver braid pooling on the stone floor. "Forgive me, my lord. I spoke out of concern for your happiness, nothing more."
Primus exhaled, the frost receding. "Then concern yourself with obedience. Deliver the letter. Tell the duke that Lord Primus of House Noctis requests audience at his earliest convenience. Make it clear that refusal… would displease me."
Lazarus rose, bowing so low his forehead nearly touched the floor. "It will be done tonight."
He turned to leave, but Primus's voice stopped him at the threshold.
"And Lazarus—one more thing."
"My lord?"
"If any harm comes to her before I claim her, I will hold you responsible. She is mine now. Protect her as you would my own heart."
Lazarus met his master's eyes, understanding the depth of that order. "With my life, my lord."
Then he vanished into shadow, carrying a letter that would upend a quiet mortal household and bind a forgotten girl to the darkness she had always secretly belonged to.
In her sunlit room, Hazel closed her eyes and saw crimson ones gazing back—patient, possessive, and for the first time in her life, truly seeing her.
She smiled into the pillow.
Strange, indeed.